splashed on ceilings and floors,
etched in potshots,
bright red and freshly painted
with the blood of
Mohammed's children.
The writing is in their eyes,
shell-shocked,
grainy,
aching to close.
The writing is scrawled in the skys,
jetted between the clouds,
riding erratically on sun rays,
trolling death in dusty puffs below.
The writing is on their palms,
chronically sweating, and their fingers,
filthy with the knowledge
of hair-trigger death.
The writing is in our toothless smiles,
dimpled in American Idols,
close-mouthed, too ashamed
not to zip up the lies.
The writing is on their boots,
broken and scuffed to second-hand vintage
well before their time,
regularly in search of new feet.
The writing is on every cigarette,
burning a hole in some soldier's lung,
while he lip-pops smoke rings, wafting
through the air like sweet lost souls .
The writing is on our heads
and the pen is in our hands.
How many more must die
before the ink finally, finally runs dry?
© The Unknown Candidate
Photo credit: This image taken from a videotape made by a Haditha, Iraq journalism student and obtained by Time Magazine via the Hammurabi Human Rights Group, shows a scene in what appears to be a morgue following an alleged fatal raid by United States forces which took place on Saturday, Nov. 19, 2005, in Haditha, Iraq. The alleged murder of about 24 civilians by U.S. Marines in Haditha, a volatile town in western Iraq, has barely caused a stir in Iraq and much of the Arab world _ where American troops are reviled as brutal invaders who regularly commit such acts. (AP Photo/Hammurabi Human Rights Group, File)
Also see:
- Stacy Bannerman | Empty Boots and Baby Shoes
- Kennedy: Vote Against Iraq War My Best
- Peter Laufer, AlterNet: When AWOL Is the Only Way Out
- US winces as Haditha echoes My Lai
- Larry Johnson | Earplugs, Marines, and Haditha
Larry Johnson travels in Iraq, where he meets with soldiers who are heading to Haditha and offers that "We must also accept that Americans as a whole share some responsibility for the actions of these soldiers. We sent them to war. We put them square in the middle of the battle. We cannot simply sit idly on the sidelines clucking our tongues over the awful thing that was done."
- US Commanders Knew Haditha Deaths From Gunfire: Paper
- TIME.com: The Ghosts Of Haditha
- AlterNet: Amy Goodman/Democracy Now!: What Happened at Haditha
- Press Accounts Suggest Possible Military 'Cover-up' in Ishagi Killings
- Maureen Dowd: Don't Become Them
Maureen Dowd refers to the massacre at Haditha as "A My Lai acid flashback." She finds irony in "The force that sacked Saddam to stop him from killing innocents is now accused of killing innocents."
Marine commanders in Iraq knew within two days of the killings in Haditha in November that gunfire, not a roadside bomb, had killed Iraqi civilians but they saw no reason to investigate further, The New York Times reported on Saturday.
The U.S military said Saturday it had found no wrongdoing in the March 15 raid on a home in Ishaqi that left nine Iraqi civilians dead. But, as with the apparent massacre in Haditha, will a military "cover-up" in this case come undone? Editor & Publisher coverage from back in March, and other evidence, suggest that the official story may soon unravel.
2 comments:
beautiful poem, dude. thank you.
Thank you, my friend. ;)
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